An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [79]
"Wait," I said, walking around to his side of the car. Detective Wilson's face looked as confused as it had appeared confident a few moments earlier; his face looked younger, too, which is to say that confidence ages you, but confusion keeps you young, the way a positive outlook and Swedish facial creams are supposed to but never do. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to your house," he said, "to talk to your wife and this Thomas Coleman."
"Just because I said so?" I asked. Was being a stool pigeon this easy? Who knew that all you had to do was give voice to your suspicions and blame someone else to get such quick results? "Just like that?"
"Yes, Sam," he said. "Just like that. But you'd better not be lying. You better not be jerking me around."
"I'm not," I assured him, even though I was the person who really needed reassuring. Thomas Coleman had been my number one suspect, my sole suspect, really. I had known with all my heart that he was the one who'd set the fires; I had known he was the guilty one. And then I had gone ahead and said so, to Detective Wilson, and then immediately afterward I had doubts, big ones. I'd said guilty, and immediately Thomas Coleman had seemed as if he might be innocent. I wondered whether, if I said innocent, he might seem guilty again. But it was too late to say that, so instead I asked, "But aren't you going to ask my mother where she was last night before you go? Aren't you going to ask her where she was the night of the Bellamy House fire, too?" I said this not because I wanted him to ask her that, but because Detective Wilson ― with his badge and ID and gun and coffee ― was seeming more and more like a real detective, and I wanted to know what a real detective might ask, and when, and of whom.
"Not now," he said. "Besides, I know where I can find her." With that, Detective Wilson rolled up his window and peeled out into the foggy night, leaving behind the squeal of his tires and the smell of his exhaust and this lesson: being a real detective meant knowing where you could find people. I knew now where I could find my mother. But why was she there? Was this her apartment? Was she staying with someone else? Was this her home? Was she in the apartment and not in our house the night of the Edward Bellamy House fire, and last night, too? Was she somewhere besides the apartment? I patted my coat pocket and felt the two letters: the one from Mincher asking me to burn down the Mark Twain House, and the other, anonymous and typed, asking Mincher for three thousand dollars to do the burning. The letter had no postmark, so that meant that someone had driven there, probably from close by. But why a letter in the first place? Why not just call Mincher and pretend to be me on the phone? The only answer was that whoever had typed and delivered the letter couldn't pretend to be me on the telephone. Any man could pretend to be me on the telephone, but a woman could not. And what woman would want to pretend to be me? I really only knew two women in this world: one of them was in Camelot, and the other was right in front of me, seeming less like the mother I thought I knew, and more and more like someone I didn't know at all.
"Oh, Mom," I said, softly. My mother was still sitting at her window, not reading, not looking out the window at me, either: as far as I could tell, she was simply staring into space.
At that moment, the book-group wizards and witches emerged from the building, each of them holding their copy of the book away from their body, as though it were a divining rod leading them directly to their children's heart of hearts. They looked so happy, overjoyed, the way people are when they think they've found the answer to a particularly difficult question. Each of them felt compelled to say their hearty "Hello's" and "Good evening's" to me and then commenced to talk about the fog and how it was a very English fog, and then there was a long, sincere discussion about how very magical fog was and how they'd be sure to wake up their kids when they got home to show them the fog and then find